Chapter 8: Mending

Through the narrow, dark corridor, the view suddenly opened up, and the light grew bright.

The scent of herbs hit him, and a vibrant green filled his vision, making Gao De feel the stench of decay on his body had been largely dispelled.

This herb garden, not especially large in area, was divided into several plots of differing soil types.

Herbs, being inherently delicate “flowers and plants,” require meticulous care.

Different herbs have vastly different growth requirements, some even extremely extreme.

Leaving aside external factors like temperature and water quality, the soil requirements alone for various herbs are highly complex.

Most herbs grow well in loose, fertile soil with good drainage.

But some herbs prefer to grow in forest humus rich in organic matter—ginseng being a typical example.

Others thrive in acidic or slightly acidic soil, or along riverside sandbanks.

Therefore, one must choose suitable soil based on each herb’s natural growth habits and characteristics.

Cultivating herbs is a profound discipline: one must not only identify herbs and understand their habits, but also know how to construct environments suited to their growth, ensuring survival rates, increasing yields, and enhancing potency.

These tasks include, but are not limited to: preparing nutrient soil, thinning seedlings, setting final spacing, deep plowing combined with fertilization to improve soil structure, hoeing and hilling to remove weeds, fertilizing, irrigation, pest and disease control, and shaping plants. Gao De’s morning duties centered on hoeing and hilling, fertilizing and watering, and checking for pests and disease.

Under normal circumstances, once mastered, these tasks become simple repetitions.

Because the herbs cultivated by Master Seda were always the same varieties.

So even though this was Gao De’s first time handling these tasks, relying on the memories left by his predecessor, he completed the herb cultivation swiftly and flawlessly.

After finishing these, only one task remained for his morning work.

Gao De hurried to a small room.

Inside the room stood many iron cages, each containing five to ten gray-brown rats.

These were the small gray rats specially bred by Master Seda for live drug experiments.

Although human testing yields the most accurate results, even in a world where human life is not highly valued, Master Seda could never afford to recklessly use living humans for testing—animal testing remained the norm.

Small gray rats breed rapidly, are cheap to raise, have low aggression, and, under these conditions, share high genetic similarity with humans—not physical appearance.

Thus, small gray rats naturally became the ideal live test subjects.

Gao De poured feed into each cage’s food tray and filled their water containers, then checked the condition of all the rats, noticing one appeared listless and lacked the energy to compete for food.

Upon closer inspection, he saw the rat’s back had patches of baldness—patches of fur completely fallen out, revealing reddish skin beneath.

“Looks like a skin disease,” Gao De judged, nodding. “That’s you.”

He pulled the sick rat out of its cage.

Of course, Gao De had no intention of curing it.

First, he couldn’t; second, there was no need.

Because small gray rats were far less valuable than herbs, apprentices in the herb garden didn’t treat them with the same care as the plants, so occasional illnesses were common.

The ultimate fate of these sick rats was always the same: “detect early, humanely euthanize,” to prevent contagion to healthy ones.

Gao De showed no mercy—he gripped the rat’s head and twisted its neck sharply. A crisp snap echoed, and the rat ceased struggling, instantly lifeless.

He tossed the dead rat aside and turned his attention inward.

Deep in his mind, a delicate crescent-shaped gem now glowed with spiritual light.

Changes had occurred: inside the gem, two clusters of light points and twelve faint lines formed two ladle-shaped patterns resembling the Big Dipper.

Each ladle pattern had seven points and six lines, but only the starting point glowed—the other six remained dim.

It was clear: the pattern would only be complete once all seven points lit up.

The next instant, the familiar interface appeared before Gao De’s inner vision.

Source:

0-Ring—【Human】(1/7), 【Gray-Eyed Rat】(1/7)

Spells:

0-Ring—【Mage Hand】, 【Mending】

Compared to before, the Source section now had a new entry: 【Gray-Eyed Rat】.

That was the rat’s scientific name.

“As expected,” Gao De murmured.

When he first saw this interface, he had already suspected the Source wasn’t limited to humans—it should expand like the spell list, with multiple entries, though he’d only unlocked the Human one so far.

When burying Yilan’s body in the back hills, he’d crushed several unknown insects to test his theory, but no new entries appeared in the Source section.

Either the Source wasn’t acquired by killing… or those insects were too weak to provide Source.

After all, before the Human entry, there was a tier: 0-Ring.

To obtain 0-Ring Source, one likely needed to draw it only from 0-Ring beings.

Yilan was a mage apprentice—classified as a 0-Ring mage—and thus qualified to provide Source.

The latter possibility was far more likely.

Speculation wouldn’t yield answers—he needed experimentation.

In the herb garden, besides the mage apprentices, there was exactly one other 0-Ring creature.

【Gray-Eyed Rat】—commonly called small gray rat—though weak and helpless, its tier matched that of mage apprentices: both were 0-Ring.

Because gray-eyed rats carried an extremely faint trace of terrestrial bloodline.

This faint trace granted them no supernatural abilities or the strength of true terrestrial beings, but it did remove them from the category of ordinary animals, placing them in the 0-Ring tier—though even within 0-Ring, differences existed.

His theory was confirmed; what followed was inevitable.

Killing seven humans was hard, but killing seven small gray rats was effortless.

Gao De acted immediately.

He pulled another healthy gray-eyed rat from its cage.

The rat kicked its tiny legs frantically, emitting sharp squeaks—but it was useless, like a frail girl powerless against assault.

Gao De studied the rat carefully for several seconds, confirmed no change appeared on the panel, then quietly extended his other hand toward the rat, which had seemingly grown accustomed to being held and ceased struggling.

A crisp snap echoed—the rat instantly went still. The next moment, another light point inside the gem flared to life.

Source:

0-Ring—【Human】(1/7), 【Gray-Eyed Rat】(2/7)

“So death is necessary—but I wonder if it must be death by my own hand.”

Gao De mused inwardly.

That could be tested later; no need to rush now.

The urgent task was to obtain the first complete Source.

He set down the dead rat and scanned the cages, where the other rats remained unaware of their impending fate. Gray-eyed rats weren’t valuable, and losses were common—so even if seven died in a day, no one would care.

Combined with Gao De’s eagerness to test the Source’s effects, he swiftly sacrificed five more rats.

Soon.

Source:

0-Ring—【Human】(1/7), 【Gray-Eyed Rat】(7/7)

The crescent gem still hung motionless at the center of Gao De’s spell star-sea.

But inside it, seven light points now glowed brightly, the six faint lines had solidified into luminous threads, forming an inseparable model resembling the Big Dipper, slowly rotating—exquisitely beautiful.

“Come on, let’s see what you’re capable of.”

Gao De murmured inwardly, shifting focus to the two spells he knew.

Each had a small yellow plus symbol flickering.

He hesitated briefly, then chose to test 【Mending】.

【Mending】 (Alteration, 0-Ring):

This spell repairs a single break or crack on any object you touch—such as mending a broken chain, a key snapped in two, a torn cloak, or a leaking wine bag.

As long as the damage or break does not exceed one foot in any direction, you can restore it without a trace.

This spell can physically repair a magical item or construct, but it will not restore any magic upon such objects.

Gao De once again mentally tapped the yellow plus beside 【Mending】.

“Add point.”

Instant change occurred.

Inside the gem, the complete 【Gray-Eyed Rat】 Big Dipper model ceased rotating and flowed outward, moving toward the 【Mending】 spell model.

The spell model—the foundation upon which a mage casts a spell.

It is composed of star-particles within the spell star-sea, appearing externally as constellations formed by countless stars.

Unlike constellations in books, whose connecting lines are artificial aids for observation, the lines in spell models are real.

Mages follow spell formulas, using mental force to draw star-particles into position and anchor them as scaffolding, constructing a spell model from star-particles.

Once successfully constructed, the mage has preliminarily mastered the spell and can now cast it through the model.

Each spell model’s structure is unique—often vastly different—with near-strict requirements for the number of star-particles and their distances and directions; even a hair’s breadth off renders failure.

Thus, mastering a spell is extremely difficult and time-consuming, normally requiring hundreds or even thousands of failed attempts before success.

Now, the Big Dipper’s target was this most vital element of a mage’s power: the spell model.

The Big Dipper moved swiftly—in an instant, it struck the 【Mending】 spell model.

The speed of the Big Dipper was swift; in the blink of an eye, it slammed into the spell model of [Repair Shu ].

The next moment, a flash of spiritual light—the seven glowing points flowed into the spell model like swallows returning to their nest.

In the next instant, spiritual light flickered, and seven shimmering dots melted into the spell model like young swallows returning to their nest.

"This is."

In Gao De’s stunned confusion, the previously complete [Repair] spell model, after the light dots merged into it, suddenly seemed to rejuvenate, sprouting new branches and extending outward at certain nodes, revealing fresh lines and stars.

The entire process was remarkably stable and natural: some nodes extended a single line and one star, others extended more, yet none of these changes disrupted the original foundational structure of the spell model.

Only seven light dots had been added, yet the final [Repair] spell model sprouted far more than seven stars—thirteen new stars emerged before the growth ceased.

The "Big Dipper Seven Stars" had vanished; the [Repair] spell model had settled again, no further changes occurring.

Gazing at the spell model now transformed, vastly different from the theoretical [Repair] model, certain information instinctively surfaced in Gao De’s mind.

This information told Gao De that the new spell model was still a 0th-level Transmutation spell: [Repair], its effect unchanged—it still repaired minor damage to targeted objects.

Yet compared to the original Repair, it now possessed one additional feature.

Under the new spell model, Repair could restore the spells previously inscribed upon magical items when repairing them.

It seemed like only a minor change, but Gao De’s vision was not so narrow—he understood clearly this was a qualitative transcendence.

In the terminology of his world before transmigration, this process was called "skill enhancement."

This enhancement was not merely a numerical boost, but a higher-tier mechanistic upgrade.

The crude information interface had also undergone changes.

Origins:

0th-level — [Human] (1/7), [Gray-Eyed Rat] (used)

0th-level — [Mage Hand], [Repair Shu +]

The 0th-level spell [Repair], under the influence of the Origin, had become [Repair+]; correspondingly, the yellow plus sign following its name had vanished.

[Repair+] (Transmutation, 0th-level):

This spell can repair one break or crack on any object you touch—for example, mending a broken chain, a key snapped in two, a torn cloak, or a leaking wine sack.

As long as the break or fracture does not exceed one foot in any direction, you can repair it without leaving a trace.

This spell can physically repair a magical item or a construct, but it will not restore any spells inscribed upon such objects.

Additional: While repairing a magical item, you may also restore the spells originally inscribed upon it.

(End of Chapter)